flotilla

plural flotillas

1. nauticalA small fleet of warships (usually of the same class), or a fleet of small ships.

   Toward the horizon a flotilla of fishing-boats showed immutable, pink-lacquered by the evening sun.

   1919, Ronald Firbank, Valmouth, Duckworth, hardback edition, page 102

   1 more example

   Driven from their home system by the geth nearly three centuries ago, most quarians now live aboard the Migrant Fleet, a flotilla of fifty thousand vessels ranging in size from passenger shuttles to mobile space stations. Home to 17 million quarians, the flotilla understandably has scarce resources. Because of this, each quarian must go on a rite of passage known as the Pilgrimage when they come of age. They leave the fleet and only return once they have found something of value they can bring back to their people.

   2008, BioWare, Mass Effect, Redwood City: Electronic Arts, →ISBN, →OCLC, PC, scene: Quarians Codex entry

2. broadlyA small group of things or people

   flotilla of tiny ducklings

   2021, Liz Trenow, The Secrets of the Lake

   1 more example

   After a few moments Chloe saw Rosamund walking towards them with a small flotilla of shopping bags.

   2009 October 29, David Walliams [pseudonym; David Edward Williams], “Abandon Starbucks!”, in Mr Stink, London: HarperCollins Children’s Books, →ISBN, page 74

3. cellular automataA spaceship made of one or more central mutually stabilizing overweight spaceships flanked by lightweight, middleweight, or heavyweight spaceships that prevent the formation of destructive eggs.

   For rule R(2222) a flotilla of six gliders traveling eastwards is generated.

   2005 September 28, Andrew Adamatzky, Genaro Juárez Martínez, Juan Carlos Seck Tuoh Mora, Phenomenology of reaction-diffusion binary-state cellular automata, page 21

   2 more examples

   Now, the smallest known Life spaceship that isn’t a glider, a *WSS, or a flotilla of *WSSs is the loafer, which has population 20 in a 9 by 9 bounding box.

   2016 July 9, MathematRec, Big and natural and (5,2)c/190

   The resulting spaceship (shown below) has a phase with only 24 cells, making it in this respect the smallest known spaceship other than the standard spaceships and some trivial two-spaceship flotillas derived from them.

   2025 October 14 (last accessed), Conway’s Game of Life